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‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ teaser unleashes destruction

The full trailer for “Star Trek Into Darkness” is still more than a week away, but the taste of destruction shown in the first look at the film released today is more than enough to get fans buzzing.

In the teaser, the film’s unnamed villain, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, utters threats such as “You think your world is safe? It is an illusion,” while destruction and mayhem hail down upon Earth. There are lots, and lots, of explosions.

It also appears that director J.J. Abrams is taking the U.S.S. Enterprise someplace it’s never been before: underwater. Whether that’s the destination intended by Kirk (Chris Pine) or whether the poor Enterprise is going to undergo more abuse remains to be seen.

The teaser has been released simultaneously in multiple languages, but strangely, the Japanese version has a slightly different ending, with Cumberbatch asking, “Is there anything you wouldn’t do for your family?” The line is followed by a shot of what appears to be Kirk and Spock putting their hands up on opposite sides of a glass partition.

This would seem to be a deliberate callback to the climax of “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” in which Spock exposed himself to a lethal dose of radiation in saving the ship and had to say goodbye to Kirk on the opposite side of a similar glass partition.

Will Spock face a similar fate in “Into Darkness?” No one will know for sure until the film opens May 17, 2013.